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AUTHOR: 


GAGE,  WILLIAM 
LEONARD 


TITLE: 


THE  SALVATION  OF 
FAUST 

PLACE: 

BOSTON 

DA  TE : 

1889 


COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARIES 
PRESERVATION  DEPARTMENT 

BIBLIOGRAPHIC  MICROFORM  TARHFT 


Master  Negative  # 
9ii-  ?^<^5^  -  lo 


Original  Material  as  Filmed  -  Existing  Bibliographic  Record 


G05 
G121 


Gage,  William  Leonard,  1832-1889. 

The  salvation  of  Faust;  a  study  of  Goethe's 
poem,  with  special  reference  to  the  second 
part  and  the  problem  of  life.  Boston,  Cuoples 
and  Hurd,  1889. 

82  p. 


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THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST 


V 


I 


THE 


SALVATION  OF  FAUST 

A  STUDY  OF  GOETHE'S  POEM 

WITH  SPECIAL  REFERENCE  TO 

THE  SECOND   PART  AND  THE  PROB- 
LEM OF  LIFE 


BY 


WILLIAM   LEONARD   GAGE 


BOSTON 

CUPPLES  AND  HURD 

(C{)E  2C(0onquin  JDretfj 

1889 


o 
o 


y 


^^  f 


Copyright,  1889, 
Bt  WILLIAM  LEONARD  GAGE. 

All  rights  reserved. 


fi 


SIVEItSIDB,  CAMBRIDGE: 
ELBCTROTYPBD    AND    PRINTED    BT 
H.   O.   HOUGHTON  AND  COMPANY. 


PREFACE. 


It  is  one  of  the  glories  of  Lessing 
that  he  conceived  the  plan,  and  partly 
executed  it,  of  writing  a  "Faust"  in 
which  the  keynote  should  be  Aspira- 
tion and  Salvation ;  and  had  he  done 
so  we  should  have  had  a  work  greater 
than  even  Nathan  the  Wise.  But  it 
was  left  to  Goethe  to  carry  this  out; 
and  in  what  manner  and  to  what  a  ma- 
jestic height  of  attainment  it  is  my  task 
in  this  book  to  show.  Berlioz,  in  giving 
the  name  "  The  Damnation  of  Faust "  to 
his  superb  and  thrilling  treatment  of  the 
old  Faust  legend,  has  taken  but  a  part 
of  the  work  as  planned  by  Lessing  and 
executed  by  Goethe;  yet  even   in  his 


b  PREFACE. 

libretto  how  plainly  is  the  Goethe  in- 
fluence to  be  seen.  Still,  in  his  work, 
as  in  Gounod's  and  Mr.  Irving-'s,  the 
great  Goethe  conception  of  Aspiration 
and  Salvation  is  seen  only  in  Margaret  -, 
not  at  ail  in  Faust. 

It  is  safe  to  say  that  the  line  of  de- 
velopment which  will  be  found  in  this 
book  could  not  have  been  possible  for 
years  after  "Faust  "  was  finished.     The 
old  prejudice   against   Goethe,    largely 
based    upon    the    invariable    habit    of 
studying   him   in    his    youthful    years 
and  those  spent  in  Weimar  before  the 
Italian  journey ;  the  fascination  of  that 
splendid  youth  in  the  Storm  and  Stress 
period  of  his  life,  filled  with  loves  and 
longings  and  vagaries,  with  Titan  power 
and  overwhelming  charms  of  face  and 
manner  and  utterance,  —  this,  added  to 
the  conviction  that  the  Second  Part  of 
"  Faust "  was,  in  all  regards,  inferior  to 


PREFACE,  7 

the  First,  incoherent,  crabbed  in  style, 
pedantic,  and  halting,  caused  it  for  years 
to   be   spoken  of  with  disrespect,  and 
warned  thinkers  from  its  pages.     But 
this  is  past ;  a  new  interest  has  set  in, 
and,  in  all  fair  probabiHty,  "  Faust "  in 
its  complete  form  is  to  become  the  Di- 
vina  Commedia  of  our  age,  the  great- 
est of  our  nineteenth  century's  Uterary 
monuments.     Had  Dante  written  in  our 
time,   he    might    have   contested    with 
Goethe  for  the  first  place  ;  but  as  Dante 
presents  the  theology  of  the  Mediaeval 
Age  and  Goethe  that  of  our  time,  the 
one  who  is  of  us  and  with  us  must  seem 
the  greater  as  deaUng  with  that  which 
is  to  us  so  vital  and  transcendent. 

I  may,  perhaps,  be  presumptuous 
enough  to  ask  my  readers  to  take  these 
pages  without  a  break  in  the  first  pe- 
rusal, and  to  examine  the  notes  in  a  sec- 
ond and  more  leisurely  reading.    I  shall 


8 


PREFACE. 


ask,  too,  for  some  indulgence  towards 
my  repetitious  summing  up  of  the  ar- 
gument from  time  to  time ;  for,  as  it  is 
no  light  task  to  present  the  entire  ar- 
gument of  "  Faust  "  within  this  limited 
space,  it  has  seemed  to  me  well  to  be 
sure  that  my  reader  be  not  hurried  too 
rapidly  from  stage  to  stage. 


Habtford,  Coxn. 


THE  SALVATION  OP  FAUST. 


The  story  of  Faust,  the  magician,  is 
one  which  has  been  familiar  to  almost 
every  German  for  nearly  three  hundred 
years.  The  legend  bearing  his  name 
and  telUng  of  his  compact  with  the 
devil,  that  in  consideration  of  all  kinds 
of  sensual  joy  for  the  period  of  twenty- 
four  years  he  should  sell  his  soul,  was 
carried  to  England  near  the  close  of 
the  sixteenth  century;^  Marlowe,  Shake- 
speare's great  contemporary,  caught  it 
up  and  produced  it  in  a  five-act  play, 
yet  never  popularized  it  there ;  and  till 
Gounod,  a  Frenchman,  made  an  opera 
out  of  it,  and  BerHoz,  a  German,  made 
a  cantata,  and  Wills,  an  EngUshman, 


10         THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 

made  a  play  out  of  it  for  Mr.  Irving 
and    Miss    Terry,   it    has    never   been 
known  to  the  people  at  large  either  in 
England  or  America.     It  wiU,  perhaps, 
be  a  surprise  to  the  reader  that  after 
,  Marlowe,  and  before  Goethe  wrote  his 
"Faust,"  there  appeared  fifty-one  dramas 
having   Faust  as   their  theme;   nearly 
all  of  these  in  Germany.     And  in  evi- 
dence that  Goethe's  "Faust,"   though 
seeming  to  be  the  only  one,  is  by  no 
means    alone    even   in    modern    litera- 
ture, I  add  that  seventy  -  two  different 
dramas  having   Faust  as   their  motive 
have  been  written  since   Goethe's  was 
published.^ 

But  I  bear  in  mind  that  in  our  land, 
outside  of  a  small  circle  of  German 
scholars,  and  outside  of  the  very  large 
number  who  owe  their  acquaintance 
with  "  Faust  "  to  Gounod,  Berhoz,  and 
Henry  Irving,  there  exists  but  a  slight 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST.         11 

acquaintance  with  the  work  as  a  whole, 
—  with  its  profound  treatment  of  the 
problem  of  life.^     To  the  popular  com- 
prehension "  Faust "  is  the  story  of  a 
man  who  sold  his  soul  to  the  devil  as 
an  equivalent  for  one  form  of  pleasure, 
caused  the  ruin  of  a  beautiful  girl,  and 
after  a  wild  carouse  and  a  complete  ex- 
haustion of  the  resources  of  sin,  miser- 
ably perished,*  Margaret  being  saved  by 
her  repentance,  and  Faust  being  doomed 
to  the  loss  of  eternal  blessedness.    With 
the  close  of  what  I  may  call  the  episode 
of  Margaret,  it  is  popularly  supposed 
that  "Faust"  ends ;  and  if  there  be  any 
reference  to  a  Second  Part  much  longer 
than  the  First,  it  is  generally  dismissed 
as  unintelligible  or  incoherent,  as  un- 
worthy of  study,  and  as  the  product  of 
a  great  poet  in  his  dotage. 

It  is  to  combat  and  rectify  this  mis- 
apprehension that  I  write  these  pages. 


12         THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 

I  wish  to  place  before  the  reader  the 
poem  in  its  unity  and  its  wholeness; 
I  wish  to  show  that  to  end  with  the 
First  Part  without  studying  the  Second 
is  to  propound  a  problem  and  to  post- 
pone its  solution  ;  it  is  to  be  content 
with  an  incident  in  life,  instead  of  ris- 
ing to  a  consideration  of  the  study  of 
human  life  in  its  complete  sweep. 

Before  entering  upon  a  statement  of 
"  Faust "  in  its  wholeness,  however,  I 
must  at  the  outset  do  away  with  the  pop- 
ular notion  that  the  First  Part  is  simple 
and  the  Second  Part  unintelligible,  and, 
in  fact,  incomprehensible.  For  many, 
many  years  I  did  not  attempt  to  read 
the  Second  Part,  although  I  had  read 
the  First  again  and  again.  I  did  not  at- 
tempt it  because  of  the  prejudice  which 
was  raised  against  it  in  my  mind  when  I 
was  a  youth.  I  now  declare  that  I  have 
with  me  the  whole  concurrence  of  mod- 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST,         13 

ern  comment  on  "  Faust "  that  it  is  the 
First  Part  that  is  deep  and  difficult,  that 
it  is  the  Second  which  is  free  from  in- 
surmountable perplexities.     I  do  not  in 
this  deny  that  to  understand  the  Second 
requires  a  much  wider  range  of  learning 
and  a  longer  experience  of  life  than  the 
First ;  to  follow  all  the  allusions  in  the 
second  and  third   acts   of   the  Second 
Part  demands  a  vaster   erudition   than 
even  "  Paradise   Lost."     But  the  great 
difficulties  of  the  work  are  in  the  Fii'st 
Part :  the  diverging  conceptions  of  Me- 
phistopheles,  including  the   origin  and 
mission  of  evil,  the  diverghig  conceptions 
of  the  Erdgeist  or  "Earth-spirit,"  the 
question   of    the  comprehensiveness  of 
Goethe's  plan,  all  these  have  taxed  the 
skill  of   commentators^  far  more  than 
the  problems  of  the  Second  Part.     By 
this  I  do  not  mean  that  there  are  not 
difficulties  in  the  Second;  the  free  use 


14 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 


of  allegory  in  which  it  abounds  must  of 
course  give  rise  to  unending  discussion. 
This,  in  fact,  was  what  Goethe  intended 
to  do ;  and  he  not  only  said  that  he  had 
put  many  mysteries  into  it,  but  he  also 
refused  to  answer  questions  which  could 
clear  up  difficulties.  He  declared  that 
he  intended  to  bequeath  it  to  those  who 
should  come  after  him  as  a  perpetual 
debating  ground  where  men  of  varied 
views  should  find  themselves  reflected ; 
where  men  should  always  be  disinterring 
a  buried  fund  of  problems  on  which  to 
sharpen  their  wits. 

And  so  I  cannot  accord  with  the 
opinion  of  Mr.  Lewes,  Goethe's  ablest 
biographer  in  my  judgment,  that  the 
Second  Part  of  "Faust"  is  a  mere  heap- 
ing up  of  undigested  materials,  having 
no  plan  and  therefore  no  key.  But  that 
view  which  was  only  too  common  in  the 
first  years  after  it  appeared  has  now 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST, 


15 


gone,  and  in  the  mass  of  modern  com- 
ment I  find  little  or  no  trace  of  such  a 
notion. 

In  contrasting  the  two  Parts  in  re- 
spect of  difficulty  of  comprehension,  I 
may  perhaps  give  my  own  impressions 
best  in  this  sentence:  that  the  First, 
however  long  studied,  will  still  leave  in 
the  mind  of  the  reader  unsettled  prob- 
lems; while  the  Second  Part,  studied 
with  equal  care,  will  open  itself  to  the 
reader  to  his  own  complete  satisfaction. 
He  at  least  will  feel  that  he  has  the  key 
to  its  meaning,  though  he  may  not  be 
able  to  make  it  appear  to  others  as  he 
reads  it  himself. 

In  general,  it  may  be  said  in  a  word 
that  the  story  of  Faust  is  the  story  of 
Goethe's  hfe.  As  the  "  Prelude  "  is  the 
story  of  Wordsworth's  youth  and  the 
"  Excursion  "  the  story  of  his  maturer 
years,  so  in  a  far  more  close  and  vivid 


16 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 


sense  is  "  Faust "  the  record  of  the  whole 
career  of  that  wonderful  man  who,  born 
in    1749    and    dying    in    1832,    lived 
through  the  storms  of  the  French  Rev- 
olution, and  survived   long   enough  to 
see  the  opening  of  the  great  industrial 
era  which  is  now  at  its  heig^ht.     He  wit- 
nessed  the  upheaval  of  thought  caused 
by  Rousseau   and   his  school ;  he  wit- 
nessed the  passing  away  of  the  old  wor- 
ship of  convention  and  the  coming  in 
of  the  age  of  freedom  ;  he  saw  this,  too, 
ripen  into  a  newer  and  better  stage,  and 
become  amenable  to  wise   control ;  he 
lived  till  all  that  is  settled  and  calm  and 
fruitful  had   come   into   Germany   and 
into  the  world.     And  as  his  own  life 
was  divided  into  two  gi*eat  parts,  that 
before  the  Italian  visit  and  that  after 
it,  so  is  his  "  Faust."    The  fust  part  of 
Goethe's  life  was  the  Titan  period,  the 
Storm  and  Stress  period,  the  period  of 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 


17 


"  Werther,"  and  "  Gtitz,"  and  "  Prome- 
theus;" the  second,  the  period  of 
"  Tasso,  "  and  "  Hermann  and  Doro- 
thea," the  period  of  his  long  and  pa- 
tient scientific  studies,  the  period  of  the 
Second  Part  of  "  Faust,"  with  its  tran- 
quillity, its  learning,  its  exhaustive  sum- 
mary of  history,  its  fruitful  use  of  even 
the  mythologies  of  the  ancient  world  to 
make  clear  the  meaning  of  the  nine- 
teenth century. 

Goethe  once  said  truly  of  his  poems, 
"  They  are  all  confessions."  I  may  add 
that  each  is  a  bit  of  his  own  biography, 
told  in  the  most  exquisite  language, 
each  the  mirror  of  an  actual  thought, 
experience,  love,  fancy,  delight,  but 
"Faust"  is  the  summing  up  of  them 
all.  The  clue  to  the  study  of  "  Faust," 
as  to  that  of  all  his  writings,  is  there- 
fore a  minute  knowledge  of  the  life  of 
this  most  fascinating  man  ;  this  figure 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 


who  commands  the  attention  of  all  the 
age  and  the  most  idolatrous  regard  of 
millions  as  no  man  has  done  who  has 
ever  lived.  It  is  now  fifty-seven  years 
since  Goethe  died,  yet  it  may  be  said 
of  him  alone  that  every  year,  so  far 
from  dinmiing  his  fame  and  burying  his 
deeds  in  oblivion,  is  only  quickening  the 
curiosity  of  men,  is  only  bringing  out 
the  minutest  details,  is  making  him  the 
most  discussed  as  well  as  the  most  be- 
wondered  man  of  our,  or  of  any,  age. 
Every  year  books  are  published  about 
him,^  and  no  signs  appear  of  anything 
but  an  augmented  interest  as  well  as  a 
calmer  judgment  and  growing  enthusi- 
asm, which,  while  making  all  allowances 
for  the  failures  of  humanity,  is  placing 
him  in  a  hght  only  shared  by  Shake- 
speare, Homer,  and  Dante. 

I  do  not  mean  to  intimate  that  Faust 
is  Goethe,  that  is,  they  are  interchange- 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 


19 


able  names ;  but  I  may  say  that  Goethe 
in  portraying  Faust  has  depicted  him- 
self and  his  career  —  all  his  experi- 
ments on  life,  all  his  failures,  all  his 
successes.  And  this  is  one  reason  why, 
in  reading  "Faust,"  we  see  that  the 
other  characters  are  drawn  with  a  firmer, 
clearer  hand  than  Faust  himself.  Me- 
phistopheles,  Gretchen,  Wagner,  all  are 
done  with  bold  and  decisive  strokes ; 
only  Faust  has  any  marks  of  dimness. 
Dim,  I  say,  not  indistinct,  for  Goethe 
knew  himself.  Like  all  his  dealings 
with  himself  he  was  always  cool  and 
deliberate;  the  reader  may  recall  Dr. 
Bartol's  very  witty  saying  that  "  Goethe 
loved  too  wisely  and  not  well."  He  was 
never  betrayed  beyond  himself ;  and 
just  as  in  his  youth  he  was  capable  of 
giving  up  Frederika  because  she  stood 
in  hi,  path,  a„  act  ot  self-abnegation 
on  Goethe's  part  which  I  have  seldom 


/ 


20 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 


heard  praisecU  as  it  deserves ;  as  he  left 
Wetzlar  and  Lotte  Buff  and  Lili  Schcine- 
man ;  as  he  could  do  this  and  did  do 
this  always,  so  he  could  take  himself  in 
hand  and  calmly  review  his  career.  And 
this  he  did,  and  "  Faust "  is,  in  its  most 
simple  and  rudimentary  sense,  the  story 
of  Goethe's  Ufe. 

Of  course,  the  tragedy  of  Margaret 
corresponds,  taken  in  its  extreme  re- 
sults, with  no  external  circumstance  in 
Goethe's  career;  but  the  full  develop- 
ment  in  his  own  penitent  heart  of  that 
which  took  place  in  his  youth,  the 
bringing  out  into  logical  results  and 
terrible  culminations  of  what  he  felt  in 
his  youthful  fascination  with  Gretchen 
of  Frankfurt  and  Frederika  of  Sesen- 
heim,  and  what  he  had  seen  in  the 
heart-workings  of  Frederika  in  her  dis- 
appointment and  after  her  surrender  of 
him,  gave  him  the  key  to  that  fascinat- 


\ 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST,         21 

ing  and  soul-searching  tragedy  to  which 
we  give  the  name  of  "  Faust,"  and  to 
which  we  should  more  strictly  give  the 
name  of  "Margaret."^  There  is  Uttle 
doubt  that  the  theme  kindled  as  he 
wrought  it  out ;  that  the  loveliness  of 
the  character  of  this  sweet  peasant  girl 
drew  his  own  heart  to  her ;  and  that  he 
was  carried  away  by  his  theme.  He  did 
not  stop  his  pen  till  he  had  reached  the 
close;  traced  the  logic  of  passion  and 
remorse  and  circumstance  to  the  bitter 
end ;  saw  her  lost  and  then  saw  her 
saved  by  the  triumphant  force  of  her 
own  penitent  heart.  Written  as  all  those 
scenes  were  in  his  early  youth,  while  he 
was  between  twenty  and  twenty -five 
years  of  age,  written  while  he  was  in 
the  very  thick  of  his  own  powerful  and 
tempestuous  experience,  they  are  the 
best,  strongest,  and  most  moving  lines 
that  he  ever  penned,^  and  I  do  not  won- 


( 


'  "mmia 


|» 


22        THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 

der  that  they  took  up  a  disproportionate 
part  of  his  whole  "  Faust,"  a  part  which 
I  cannot  think  that  they  claimed  when 
he  planned  the  poem. 

For  I  am  quite  clear  that  despite  what 
seems  to   be  Goethe's   own   conflicting 
testimony,  he  had  even  in  the  year  1772, 
when  he  was  twenty-three,  and  during 
the  following  years,  when  he  was  writ- 
ing what  I  may   call   the   "  Margaret- 
Faust,"  '°  a  conception  more  or  less  de- 
fined of  the  whole  work;    so  that,  al- 
though in  a  letter  to  Schiller  years  after 
the    edition  of    1790   was    printed  he 
speaks  of  making  a  new  plan,  his  words 
are  to  be  read  in  the  light  of  his  letter 
to  William  von  Humboldt  a  few  months 
before  his  death  in  1832,  that  for  sixty 
years  he  carried  the  plot  of  "Faust" 
substantially   unchanged   in    his   mind. 
Between  1801,  when  the  First  Part  was 
completed  in  the  form  in  which  it  was 


TEE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST.        23 

to  remain,  and  1824,  when  he  took  up 
in  earnest  the  Second  Part,  during  that 
quarter  of  a  century  Goethe  was  living 
his  life  and  thus  preparing  himself  to 
write  the  conclusion  of  "  Faust."  This 
he  dreaded  to  begin  ;  and  we  owe  it  to 
his  friend  Eckermann  (let  it  not  be  for- 
gotten) that  at  the  age  of  seventy-five 
he  took  up  the  task  and  went  on  till 
the  age  of  eighty-one,  little  by  Uttle, 
not  in  the  old  fire  of  youth,  a  hand- 
breadth  at  a  time,  as  he  pathetically  tells 
us,"  until  it  was  done,  sealed  up,  and 
laid  away,  not  to  be  published  till  his 
eyes  should  be  closed.  "  Now,"  he  says 
to  Eckermann,  —  "  now  that  ^  Faust ' 
is  done,  it  matters  not  what  I  do  more ; 
my  life  is  complete :  what  I  have  after 
this  is  out  of  pure  grace." 

The  man  Faust,  like  his  prototype 
Job,  may  be  said  to  be  subject  to  three 
temptations;   and   singularly  they   are 


I 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 


the  three  which  are  depicted  in  the  New 
Testament  as  coming  to  our  adorable 
Saviour.  The  Satan  of  Job  is  a  much 
more  simple  and  rudimental  conception 
than  the  Satan  of  Faust ;  the  trials  to 
which  Job  was  subjected  monotonous  in 
comparison  with  those  of  Faust.  With 
Job  there  is  a  succession  of  catas- 
trophes :  on  horror's  head  horrors  accu- 
mulate ;  but  they  all  appeal  to  the  same 
note  in  human  nature.  Following  the 
analogy  of  the  story  of  the  temptation 
of  Christ,  I  may  say  that  Goethe  has 
caused  his  Faust  to  feel,  first,  the  lust 
of  the  flesh,  then  the  lust  of  glory, 
and  then  the  lust  of  dominion.  As 
the  lover  of  Margaret  he  touches  the 
depths  of  sensual  passion ;  as  the  aU- 
powerful  adviser  at  the  court  of  the 
German  emperor,  where  we  find  hhn 
early  in  the  Second  Part,  he  rises  to  a 
bewildering  height  of  glory;  as  a  mih- 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST.        25 

tary  hero  in  the  fourth  act,  as  the  sav- 
ior of  the  emperor  at  a  time  when  his 
realm  seemed  to  be  at  a  rival's  mercy, 
he  takes  a  place  where  his  reward,  com- 
mensurate with  his  services,  gives  him 
the  special  glory  which  he  seeks,  who 
is  intrusted  with  princely  sway.  The 
briefest  statement  of  the  Second  Part  of 
"  Faust "  is  a  recognition  of  these  last 
two  great  temptations  following  the  one 
which  is  the  theme  of  the  First  Part. 
The  "little  world,"  as  it  is  called,  of 
the  First  Part  opens  out  into  the  "  great 
world  "  of  the  Second  Part,  the  hfe  of 
the  palace  and  the  camp. 

The  culmination  of  the  First  Part  is 
the  Salvation  of  Margaret :  the  power 
of  penitence  to  deliver  from  sin  and 
from  its  penalty.  From  her  sin  and 
shame,  from  the  abandonment  of  her 
remorse,  the  suffering  Margaret  is  called 
away  to  peace  and   happiness   because 


26 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 


she  has  passed  through  the  gospel  con- 
ditions and  comes   into   the   estate   of 
pardon   and   redeeming   grace.     There 
Faust  disappears,  and  our  last  view  of 
him  is  as  a  doomed  man.     No  concep- 
tion can  do  justice  to  the  horrible  ago- 
nies of  mind  mth  which  the  First  Part 
closes  on  the  betrayer  of  Margaret,  the 
slayer   of   her  brother,    and   indirectly 
of    her    mother.      The   repentance   of 
Gretchen  has  its  counterpart  in  the  de- 
spair of  Faust.     But  the  Second  Part, 
and  the  whole  poem,  viewed  as  a  whole, 
and   subordinating   the   story   of   Mar- 
garet   to   the   whole,   is   the   story    of 
Faust's  Salvation ;  and  so  in  spite  of  the 
great  temptations,  the  lust  of  glory  and 
of   dominion,  he  comes  in  the  closing 
scene   to   a   salvation   depicted   with  a 
grandeur  of  language  and  a  wealth  of 
illustration  which  leave  behind  even  the 
last   lines  of   the   First  Part.     It  only 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST         27 

needs  a  greater  than  Gounod  or  Berlioz 
to    set   that   closing    scene   to   worthy 
music  and  we  shall  have  incomparably 
the  greatest  work  in  the  world ;  the  one 
that  is  highest,  deepest,  and  widest ;  " 
and  I  am  not  forgetting  the  "  Messiah  " 
of  Handel  while  I  write  this,  but  I  am 
remembering  that  ascending  line  of  an- 
gels and  heavenly  presences  who  greet 
the  redeemed  Faust  and  usher  him  into 
the  heavenly  city;  and  I  am  under  a 
sense  of  the  greatness  and  of  the  pathos 
—  the  heart-stirring  pathos  —  in  which 
all   these  supernal   figures    salute  him, 
and  choirs  of  little  children ;  while  the 
T  oice  of  the  redeemed  Gretchen  is  also 
lieard  giving  him  welcome  who  in  life 
had  done  her  such  woful  harm,  and  yet 
whom  the  Divine  Love  was  now  usher- 
ing into  everlasting  habitations. 

I  have  given   already  what  may  be 
called  the  most  condensed  analysis  of 


'■■■■■•    ■■ 


28         THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST, 

"  Faust ; "  that  which  makes  it  the  his- 
tory of  a  final    deliverance  from    the 
three   great   temptations   of    Hfe;    the 
three  which,  with  some  external  modifi- 
cations, are  given  in  the  New  Testament 
as  approaching  our  Divine  Lord,  —  ap- 
petite, avarice,  ambition.     But  so  brief 
a  statement  will  not  suffice  if  we  would 
go  further  and  make  it  the  subject  of  a 
more  searching  analysis.    For  those  who 
have  read  the  Second  Part  of  "  Faust " 
will  remember  that  after  he  has  revived 
from  the  exhaustion  of  dismay  in  which 
the   First   Part   leaves   him;    after   he 
has  entered  upon  his  brilliant  career  at 
the  German  emperor's  court ;  after  his 
bold  stroke  in  paying  the   debts   and 
setting   the  insolvent  and  pleasure-lov- 
ing monarch  on  his  feet  again ;  after  be- 
coming the  idol  of  all  the  courtiers  by 
resorting  to  a  trick  of  finance,  whos(, 
final  outcome  should  be  ruin ;  after  all 


i 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST.        29 

this,  —  the  brilUant  success  followed  by 
the   complete   failure,  —  we   have   still 
the  spectacle  of  his  temptation  by  the 
beauty  of   Helen   of   Troy.     It  needs 
no  careful  reading  of  the  book  to  see 
that  this  is  no  repetition  of  the  story  of 
Margaret ;  Helen  is  the  representative, 
not  of  physical  beauty  simply,  but  of 
grace  and  of  all  that  we  mean  by  Gre- 
cian  culture.     Faust,  the   man   of  the 
North,  the  man  whose  mind  has  been 
fed  on  the  romanticism  of  the  North, 
on  Gothic  architecture  and  the  ballads 
and  tales  of  the  Mediaeval  Age,  is  en- 
amored of  Helen,  who  represents  all  the 
wisdom  and  repose  of  the  classic  times 
and   lands.     It   is   the   story   in  other 
forin  of  Goethe  and  his  visit  to  Italy, 
and   there  is   good    reason,    therefore, 
why   Goethe   could    and    should   write 
the  third  act  of  the  Second  Part  very 
early  in  the  century,  and  that  he  could 


30 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 


m 


pubKsh  the  act  by  itself,  a  complete 
work,  —  an  interlude,  —  which,  though 
a  part  of  "  Faust,"  could  be  understood 
without  the  rest.  There  is,  I  beUeve, 
no  difference  of  opinion  regarding  the 
grandeur  of  that  third  act,  known  as 
the  "  Helena."  When  it  was  pubUshed 
in  1826,  during  Goethe's  Hfe,  and  while 
portions  of  the  first,  second,  fourth,  and 
fifth  acts  were  still  unwritten,  he  had  per- 
fected this  wonderful  episode,  the  song 
of  the  marriage  of  Faust  and  Helen,  the 
song  of  the  birth  and  death  of  their  son 
Euphorion.  Viewed  as  a  part  of  tbo 
great  "  Faust "  story,  it  depicts  the  ef- 
fort to  satisfy  the  human  soul  with  the 
ripest  fruits  of  culture ;  shows  the  fu- 
tility of  attempting  to  stifle  the  hunger 
of  the  heart  with  any  products  of  skiU, 
taste,  and  thought.  Viewed  as  a  pirt 
of  Goethe's  own  life,  it  was  a  confession 
that  not  even  the  ItaUan  journey  and 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 


31 


all  that  it  gave  could  solve  certain  un- 
answered questions  and  meet  certain 
unappeased  cravings  of  his  nature  ;  but 
viewed  as  a  scene  within  a  side  chapel 
of  the  great  cathedral  which  we  call 
"  Faust,"  it  may  be  regarded  as  the  mar- 
riage of  Northern  Romance  and  South- 
ern Grace,  the  old  Chivalry  of  North- 
ern Europe,  with  its  song  and  arms  and 
Gothic  magnificence,  and  the  gentle, 
cultured,  classic  Beauty  of  the  South, 
with  its  love  and  melodious  language 
and  soothing  charm.  The  child  of  this 
iinion  is  Euphorion,  who  Goethe  tells  us 
stands  for  Byron,  the  representative  of 
)oth  schools,  the  finest  issue,  in  Goethe's 
opinion,  of  both  schools  ;  and  in  Eupho- 
rion's  fate  Goethe  also  tells  us  that  he 
has  pictured  Byron's  fate  in  Greece,  fall- 
"  ng  on  the  battlefield  a  martyr  to  liberty. 
But  oh  !  how  can  I  do  justice  in  these 
few  words   to  all  the   fulness   of  that 


i 


4 


/I'" 


-  32         THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST, 

beautiful   third   act,  reproducing  as   it 
does  the  very  spirit  of  antiquity ;  writ- 
ten before  Goethe's  powers  had  faded, 
written  out  of  that  thorough  compre- 
hension  of    both   the   North    and   the 
South  !     He  who  as  a  student  at  Stras- 
burg  had  loved  the  old  minster  so  that 
he   discovered  with   his   eye  what   the 
original  plan  had  been ;  and  who,  when 
asked  how  he  knew  that  in  certain  de- 
tails, which  he  named,  the  plan  had  not 
been    followed    out,    answered,    "  TJie 
building  itself  told  me,"  —  this  was  tl  e 
man,  this  man,  who  in  writing  "  Got  z 
von  Berlichingen  "  taught  Walter  Scott 
the    art   of    romance;"    this    was    the 
man  who   in  his   later   studies  had  sc 
drunk  in  the  spirit  of  antiquity  that  ia 
his  Faust  he  could  depict  the  spirit  ol' 
the   North,  in  his  Helena  the  spkit  of 
the  South,  and  in  Euphorion  the  mod- 
em spirit  in  which  both  are  united :  not 


I  _ 


\ 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 


33 


I' 


merely  as  in  a  blazing  meteor  like  By- 
ron, but  in  the  tempered  and  permanent 
qualities  of  the  best  poetry  of  our  time. 
The  Second  Part  of  "  Faust  "  begins, 
then,  with  Faust  at  the  German  em- 
peror's court ;  and  his  temptation  there 
is  tlie  lust  of  power  and  glory.  His 
agent  and  servant,  Mephistopheles,  sug- 
gests the  expedient  of  giving  out  paper 
money  to  pay  the  imperial  debts ;  it 
succeeds,  Faust  becomes  the  one  whom 
all  admire,  the  most  trusted  courtier  and 
the  most  powerful  man.  Under  the 
stimulus  of  this  success,  and  desiring  to 
please  the  emperor,  he  causes  a  great 
spectacle  to  appear,  in  which  the  whole 
past  comes  to  view,  all  the  men  who 
have  lifted  the  world  from  its  low  estate 
to  its  higher,  beginning  with  the  simple 
tillers  of  the  soil  and  ending  with  the 
highest  representatives  of  statecraft  and 
skdl.     It  is  a  picture  of  the  history  of 


m 


34 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 


35 


civilization,  done  with  perfect  art  and 
with  overflowing  knowledge.     The  an- 
cient Fates,  the  ancient  Furies,  the  an- 
cient Graces,  all  have  their  place,  not 
coming  forward  in  forms  which  dismay, 
but  all  of  them  in  their  appointed  rela- 
tions to  ancient  thought  and  the  arcient 
world   of  conduct.      Poetry   and    Pru- 
dence and  Fear  and  Irony  and  Wealth 
—  these  and  fifty  others  —  have  their 
place  and  their  word :  and  they  are  all 
so  proportioned  each  to  each  that  the 
masquerade,  as  it  is  called,  is  at  once  a 
parody  on  the  emperor's  court,  on  life, 
on  history,  on  the  sum  of  human  expe- 
rience.    It  is  incidental  to  the  Second 
Part ;  it  may  be  omitted  without  losing 
the  thread  of  the  plot,  but  it  is  a  won- 
derful picture. 

That  which  confessedly  troubled 
Goethe  most  in  writing  his  "  Faust " 
was  how  to  make  the   transitions  be- 


tween the  stages  of  the  play.  How  to 
pass,  for  example,  from  the  opening  test 
of  Faust  in  the  Second  Part,  that  of 
limitless  power  and  glory  and  its  failure 
to  give  him  lasting  satisfaction,  and  the 
test  of  perfect  culture ;  the  admiration 
of  beauty  in  its  highest  sense  and  the 
failure  of  that  test.  Goethe's  correspon- 
dence and  his  recorded  conversations 
with  Eckermann  let  us  into  this  secret. 
He  had  so  much  to  say  in  "  Faust "  that 
he  must  give  his  meaning  in  allegories 
and  the  language  of  symbol.  He  en- 
countered the  difficulty  which  Schiller 
saw  and  predicted,  that  in  the  Second 
Part  his  matter  would  be  too  vast  for 
any  frame  to  hold ;  hence  his  enforced 
use  of  such  images  as  filled  the  Second 
Part,  —  a  line  of  suggestive  pictures 
drawn  largely  from  antiquity,  from  the 
classic  world.  The  machinery  to  which 
be  was  compelled  to  resort  to   bridge 


36         THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST, 

over  the  first  act,  already  described  by 
me,  Faust  at  the  imperial  court,  and 
the  third,  the  Helena,  was  accomplished 
by  resorting  to  what  Goethe  calls  the 
Classical  Walpurgis  Night.     The  Wal- 
purgis  Night  of  the  First  Part  was  a 
coarse  and  bestial  attempt  on  the  part 
of  Mephistopheles  to  animahze  Faust; 
to  take  him  at  the  stage  where  his  lust 
for  Margaret  had  landed  him  and  make 
him  fall  in  love  with  creatures  which 
were  devilish.     Like  the  coarse  snares 
of  Auerbach's  Cellar,  this  fell  off  from 
the  high  and  essentially  noble  nature  of 
Faust,  and  he  was  master  where  it  was 
intended  that   he  should  be  a  victim. 
But  it  was  impossible  for  the  coarse, 
strong,  violent  scenes  of  the  Brocken 
top  to  be  reproduced  in  the  cooler  and 
more  tranquil  reahn  of  classic  life ;  and 
hence    the   Walpurgis    Night    of    the 
Second  Part  is  entirely  unlike  its  namcr 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 


37 


sake  of  the  First  Part.  It  is  the  in- 
troduction of  Faust  to  the  past.  It  is 
the  elaborate  preparation  by  which  the 
reader  is  made  ready  for  a  transfer  of 
the  hero  to  a  place  and  a  time  far  re- 
moved ;  from  the  Europe  of  the  Middle 
Ages  to  the  ancient  world  of  Greece. 
To  make  the  mind  ready  for  the  meet- 
ing of  Faust  and  Helen  on  common 
ground,  to  put  the  mind  into  such  con- 
ditions that  their  meeting,  their  mutual 
love,  and  their  marriage  shall  seem  con- 
sistent with  the  whole  play,  —  this,  of 
course,  demanded  special  preparations 
and  enormous  sMU.  To  this  end,  old 
Wagner,  the  pedant  of  the  First  Part, 
whose  learned  talk,  erudite  but  not  wise, 
wiU  be  remembered  by  all,  is  summoned 
on  the  field.  He  is  seen  in  the  act  of 
maldng  a  man  in  a  bottle,  a  little  chem- 
ically-formed man,  and  with  Mephisto- 
pheles' help,  he  does  actually  create  the 


38 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 


Httle  feUow,  a  bright  spark-Uke  being, 
Homunculus  by  name,  to  whom  is  de- 
puted the  task  of  guiding  Faust  and 
Mephistopheles  to  the  classical  world. 
To  this  world  Wagner  himself  is  not 
allowed  to  go.  Erudition,  dead  erudi- 
tion, has  not  the  key ;  it  must  be  eru- 
dition brightened  by  esprit ;  erudition 
kindled  into  fire.  And  yet  that  can 
only  be  the  guide.  It  is  not  permitted 
to  pass  on  to  reward.  Homunculus 
himself  attains  incompleteness,  and  hav- 
ing done  his  task  disappears.  Nor 
may  Mephistopheles  be  the  guide.  As 
Faust's  servant  he  must  be  his  compan- 
ion, but  in  the  classical  realm  he  must 
change  his  name  and  appear  in  the 
form  of  a  hateful,  witchlike  creature 
known  as  Phorkyas ;  for  in  the  classi- 
cal world  the  contrast  to  the  fair  and 
the  good  is  not  the  bad  but  the  ugly. 
I  freely  admit  that,  were  it  not  for 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST,        39 

the  brightness  of  Homunculus,  the  Httle 
man  in  the  bottle,  the  second  act  of  the 
Second  Part  would  be,  or  I  may  more 
guardedly  say  might  be,  a  trifle  ponder- 
ous. But  the  old  Wagner  coming  to 
life  again,  now  a  successful  man,  —  Pro- 
fessor Wagner;  and  the  reappearance 
of  the  callow  youth  who  in  the  First 
Part  of  "  Faust "  will  be  remembered 
as  having  been  inducted  by  Mephis- 
topheles  into  all  manner  of  deviltries, 
and  who  concluded  to  study  medicine 
the  better  to  practice  them ;  and  espe- 
cially the  hght  pleasantries  of  Homun- 
culus, the  Uttle  fellow  in  the  bottle,  who 
seems  made  simply  to  shine,  relieve  it, 
make  it  pleasant  reading,  and  fulfill 
perfectly  what  Goethe  intended,  carry- 
ing us  over  to  the  great  theme  of  the 
third  act,  written  —  let  me  repeat  — 
prior  to  the  rest  of  the  Second  Part  of 
**  Faust,"  and  only  needing  to  be  put 


40         THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 

into  right  relations  mth  the   body  of 
the  wort 

And,  if  I  may  add  a  word  of  confes- 
sion, I  will   say  that  it  is  a  problem 
which  I  have  debated  somewhat  in  my 
own   mind   why   into  that  second  act 
Goethe  has  wrought  that  long  dispute 
between  old  Thales  and  old  Anaxagforas  : 
one,  Thales,  contending  that  the  world 
was  formed  in  gradual  stages  and  by 
deposits  from  water ;  the  other  contend- 
ing with  much  lor^e  and  little  politeness 
that  it  was  the  result  of  volcanic  airen- 
cies.     This  view  was  so  distasteful  to 
Goethe,  in  fact,  he  carried  what  I  may 
call  a  hatred  to  it  so  far,  that  some  have 
thought  that  he  brought  it  into  "  Faust " 
merely  to  ridicule  it ;  and  those  who  re- 
gard the  Second  Part  as  a  collection  of 
odds  and  ends,  a  kind  of  old  man's  rag- 
bag, take  this  view  of  the  Thales  and 
Anaxagoras   debate  on   geology.     But 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST.        41 

when  I  notice  that   the  two  men  are 
working  for  the  conversion  of  the  little 
man  in  the  bottle,  this  little  fellow  who 
is  always  striving  to  be,  I  can  under- 
stand that  they  are  seriously  called  in  to 
help  him  in  his  efforts  to  shine  to  some 
purpose.     I  freely  admit  that  one  pas- 
sage in  the  First  Part  of  "  Faust,"  the 
scene  known  as  the  Walpurgis  Night's 
Dream,  cannot  possibly  be  explained  on 
any  theory  save  that  Goethe  hated  cer- 
tain men  so  badly  that  he  took  a  paper 
originally  written  for  Schiller's  "  Muse- 
nalmanach,"  and  literally  lugged  it  into 
"Faust; "  into  the  First  Part,  too,  pub- 
lished when  he  was  in  the  prime  of  his 
life.     But  I  am  not  persuaded  that  any 
such  folly  as  his  dislike  to  Werner  and 
the  men  who  represented  the  volcanic 
view  of  the  origin  of  the  earth  caused 
him  to  violate  the  proprieties  when  he 
came  to  write  the  Second  Part. 


42         THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST, 

Returning  from  a  digression  made  in 
the  interest  of  those  to  whom  I  am  not 
a  pioneer  in  this  task,  I  address  myself 
afresh  and  in  a  kind  of  review  to  what 
has   been   said,   before  pushing   on   to 
fresh  fields.     Looking  at  "  Faust "  as  a 
whole  I  remind  you  that  it  is  a  progres- 
sive story,  a  series  of  trials  followed  by 
victory ;  it  is  in  the  end  the  history  of  a 
saved,  and  not  a  fallen,  soul.    The  prob- 
lem placed  before  this  man  who  in  the 
First  Part  comes  before  us  as  a  great, 
but    dissatisfied    scholar,   knowing    all 
things   yet   contented   with   none,  this 
man  who  in  the  depth  of  his  discontent 
is  just  saved  from  suicide  by  the  hal- 
lowed relations  which  the  Easter  bells 
and  the  Easter  songs  bring  back  ;  the 
problem  placed   before   this   distracted 
and  despaiiing  man  is,  who  shall  give 
him  a  single  day  —  nay,  a  single  hour 
—  which  shall  be  so  filled  with  heart- 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 


43 


easing  solace  that  he  can  say  to  it,  Stay, 
stay,  thou  art  so  fair.  And  when  the 
whispering  devil,  coming  first  in  the 
form  of  a  poodle,  then  of  a  jaunty, 
bright,  alert  man,  promises  to  bring 
such  a  day,  such  an  hour,  Faust  agrees 
to  sell  his  soul  for  it.  He  will  take  all 
the  chances  of  the  life  to  come.  Give 
me  a  sufficing  Now  and  you  may  have 
all  the  Then.  Here  Goethe  leaves  the 
old  legend,  as  he  does  in  so  many  other 
instances,  and  reaches  out  to  the  condi- 
tions of  the  widest,  deepest  life.  The 
wager  simply  stated  is  this,  Give  me 
what  I  want,  what  I  shall  be  content  to 
keep  that  will  fill  all  my  desires,  and 
you  may  have  my  soul.  And  then 
come  the  trials.  I  have  stated  them  as 
three,  following  the  New  Testament 
analogy  and  summing  them  up  under 
the  most  general  heads.  But  we  may 
divide  and  subdivide.     First  comes  the 


! 


TEE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 


trial  in  Leipzig,  in  Auerbach's  Cellar, 
the  test  of  the  wild  student  carouse,  the 
trial  by  revelry ;  but  it  passes  entirely 
over  Faust.    Yet  the  love  potion  which 
is  brewed  there  and  which  he  drinks, 
works  its  disastrous  charm,  and  he  comes 
under  the  spell  of  Margaret's  beauty; 
and  so  the  story  of  all  that  woe  opens 
and  is  unfolded,  with  its  tragic  solem- 
nity,  heightened,  if  possible,  by  the  un- 
seemly flirtations  of  Mephistopheles  and 
Martha.    At  the  end  Margaret  is  saved, 
a   penitent,  ransomed  soul,  and   seem- 
ingly   Faust    is    damned.      Then    the 
Second  Part  opens  with  his  coming  out 
of  the  swoon  of  despaii*.     Nature,  the 
flowers,  and  the  birds  of  spring  minister 
to  him  as  he  lies  on  the  verdant  bank. 
Nature,  which  allows  no  one  to  live  on 
in  utter  despair  even  when  the  heads- 
man's axe  is  impending,  suffers  Fausv.  to 
revive,  and  whispers  to  him  her  sooth- 


•     t 


# 


t     I 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 


45 


ing  words :  type  of  the  wonderful  min- 
istrations of  God's  mercy.  Then  comes 
the  entrance  on  the  "  great  world,"  the 
counterpart  to  the  "  little  world  "  of  the 
First  Part.  Mephistopheles  is  appointed 
jester  to  the  Emperor  of  Germany,  and 
Faust,  by  Mephistopheles'  connivance, 
becomes  the  powerful  man  who  saves 
the  emperor  from  bankruptcy.  The 
great  event  is  followed  by  a  brilliant 
masquerade,  of  which  I  spoke  before,  in 
which  all  the  history  of  the  world,  the 
whole  order  of  civilization,  passes  before 
the  emperor  :  the  mimic  picture  of  life, 
the  bridge  between  the  ages,  the  mirror 
of  the  imperial  court,  the  mirror  of  man 
in  all  his  joys  and  son-ows.  It  is  a 
great  study,  this  masquerade,  even  if  de- 
tached from  the  story  of  "  Faust  "  and 
meditated  by  itself. 

But  we  move  on,  for  we  find  that  not 
even  in  the  intoxication  of  this  princely 


•  '  i 


46         THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 

pageant  which  ushers  in  a  vision  of 
Helen  of  Troy  in  all  the  beauty,  the 
charm,  the  fascinating  and  bewildering 
perfections  of  her  face  and  form,  not 
even  in  this  is  his  heart  stilled ;  for  as 
he  in  his  proud  sense  of  greatness  and 
worthiness  and  irresistible  claim  tries  to 
grasp  her,  she  vanishes  mid  the  sound  of 
a  convulsion  so  tremendous  that  Faust 
sinks  senseless  to  the  earth;  and  thus 
the  first  act  of  the  Second  Part  is  ended. 
Of  course  the  story  does  not  end ;  for 
as  I  have  akeady  said,  the  second  act 
with  its  elaborate  machinery  of  Wagner, 
and  the  Disciple,  and  the  Httle  man  in 
the  bottle,  and  Mephistopheles,  always 
present,  bridges  the  gulf  between  Ger- 
many and  Greece,  between  the  feudal 
age  and  the  classic  age,  between  north- 
ern romanticism  and  southern  grace,  and 
brings  Helen  and  Faust  into  such  re- 
lations that  in  the  third  act  —  the  great 


#     > 


I 


#1  't 


TEE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 


47 


and  beautiful  act  called  the  "  Helena," 
published  by  itself  in  Goethe's  lifetime 
and  prized  as  one  of  the  most  exquisite 
fragments  in  the  world  —  the  marriage 
of  Faust  and  Helen  is  accomplished,  and 
their  boy  is  born,  the  beautiful  Eupho- 
rion,  type  of  Byron,  type,  too,  of  the 
modern  spirit,  fruit  and  issue  of  the  two 
parents,  the  gothic  and  the  classic 
thought,  herald  of  the  industrial  age 
in  which  we  live. 

But  the  point  which  we  are  to  hold 
in  our  grasp  is  this  :  that  in  this  com- 
plex trial,  this  test  which  comes  to  his 
sense  of  power  commanding  presence 
and  beauty  subduing  force,  in  all  this 
there  comes  no  hour  when  Faust  can 
say.  Stay,  stay,  thou  art  so  fair.  Eu- 
phorion  perishes,  a  victim  to  his  own 
ungovernable  flight ;  Helen  vanishes 
from  Faust,  leaving  only  her  vail  and 
mantle  behind.     It  may  all  be  expressed 


48 


TBE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 


in  the  parallel  words  of  Eeclesiastes  : 
Vanity  and  vexation  of  spirit.     There 
is   that   beyond    to   which   Faust    still 
aspires.     The  beauty  of  Margaret,  and 
now  the  beauty  of  Helen,  meaning  all 
that  we  call  the  height  of  human  cul- 
ture, the  supreme  beauty   of  intellect 
and  grace  and  art,  all  this  leaves  him 
still  unsatisfied.     "  The  bed  is  shorter 
than  that  a  man   can   stretch   himself 
upon   it,  and  the  covering  is  narrower 
than  that  he  can  wrap  himself  in  it," 
if  I  may  reverently  quote  the  language 
of  the  prophet  Isaiah. 

With  the  fourth  act  we  come  to  what 
we  may  call  plain  saiUng,  and  it  is  plain 
sailing  to  the  end  of  the  whole  work, 
to  the  close  of  the  fifth  act.  The  great 
allegories  are  over,  the  wealth  of  learn- 
ing, the  array  of  symbols  covering 
meanings  and  hints  altogether  too  vast 
for  any  other  vehicle  of  thought.     We 


111 


•       l# 


t       |# 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST.        49 

come  to  the  true  trend  of  the  book, 
the  Salvation  of  Faust.  In  the  first 
act  he  has  appeared  as  the  ally  and  de- 
liverer of  the  Emperor  of  Germany ;  in 
the  fourth,  he  is  summoned  again  to 
reHeve  that  emperor.  There  is  a  great 
revolt ;  a  formidable  rival  is  approach- 
ing ;  the  monarch  whom  Faust  had 
assisted  when  on  the  verge  of  bank- 
ruptcy now  begs  for  military  help,  and 
with  Mephistopheles'  aid  it  is  granted. 
Faust  delivers  the  emperor,  gives  him 
back  his  throne  in  peace,  and  is  re- 
warded by  being  made  prince  absolute 
of  a  great  tract  of  land  bordering  on  a 
mighty  sea.  It  comes  to  Faust  in  the 
exercise  of  his  new  dignity  that  it  mil 
be  a  grand  and  worthy  work  to  add  to 
even  the  lordly  domain  conferred  upon 
him  by  rescuing  from  the  ocean,  Hol- 
land-like, a  great  supplementary  tract, 
which,   with    Mephistopheles'    aid,    he 


50 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 


does;  and  populous  cities  rise,  great 
harbors  filled  with  mighty  fleets  appear, 
and  Faust  is  filled  with  glory.  But  all 
this,  like  a  chapter  out  of  Ecclesiastes, 
only  leaves  him  empty  of  heart.  The 
hour  does  not  yet  come  when  he  can 
say,  Stay,  thou  art  so  fair.  And  in  the 
opening  of  the  fifth  and  the  last  act, 
we  behold  him,  this  great  man,  this 
Faust,  this  prince,  witli  wealth  and 
honor  and  power  and  glory,  the  king- 
doms of  tlie  world  at  his  feet,  so  to 
speak,  still  asking  for  that  which  is  be- 
yond. At  the  opening  of  the  fifth  act 
a  most  pleasing  scene  appears ;  two  old 
people  with  Grecian  names,  Philemon 
and  Baucis,  husband  and  wife,  are  pre- 
sented to  view  in  their  httle  cottage, 
where  a  stranger  is  seeking  shelter. 
Just  in  the  foreground  is  seen,  and  it 
is  told  like  Homer,  a  great  harbor  filled 
with  its  ships ;  and  in  the  background 


i 


•     ^ 


m  l# 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 


51 


further  away  from  the  sea  is  a  palace 
which  Faust  is  building  for  himself. 
The  little  hut  of  Philemon  and  Baucis 
stands  in  the  way  of  Faust;  it  ob- 
structs the  full  view  of  the  sea  and  the 
tract  which  he  has  won  from  the  waves. 
He  endeavors  to  buy  the  hut,  to  pay  for 
it  far  more  than  it  is  worth,  to  gain  it 
by  all  gentle  arts ;  and,  at  last,  he  em- 
powers Mephistopheles  to  secure  it,  but 
without  violence.  The  wily  servant  goes 
out,  but  finding  them  obstinate,  he 
kills  them  and  burns  their  house.  Re- 
porting this  to  his  master,  he  brings 
about  unconsciously  the  crisis  of  the 
whole  career  of  Faust.  He  sees  as 
by  a  Hghtning  flash  into  his  own  heart ; 
he  sees  what  he  is  capable  of ;  he  reads 
his  selfishness,  his  folly,  his  miserable 
ambition ;  he  is  what  would  have  been 
called  a  half  century  ago  convicted  of 
sin ;  he  is  introduced  to  himself.   There 


m 


52         THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST 

have  been  moments  before,  both  in  the 
First  and  Second  Parts,   when  he  has 
come  to  a  rupture  with  Mephistopheles, 
when  he  has  seen  how  low  and  bHnd, 
how  limited  in  vision,  how  destitute  of 
high  aun  and  noble  feeling,  how  coarse 
and  Philistine-like  the  devil  is,  but  these 
breaks  have  soon  been  healed  over  and 
the  two,  Mephistopheles  and  Faust,  have 
held   together.      But    now   it   is   over. 
Faust  casts  the  devil  off;^^  Faust  ab- 
jures magic  and  its  mfernal  aids;  he 
takes  that  step  which  in  the  Bible  is  so 
powerfully  rendered  in  the  words  "  Get 
thee  behind  me,  Satan  ;  "  or,  again,  "  Re- 
sist the  devil  and  he  will  flee  from  you." 
But  tliis,  though  a  crisis,  is  not  one 
which   at   once   brings   light   and  joy. 
We  have  not  yet  reached  the  conditions 
of  peace.     The   poem   passes   on   into 
greater  depths  and  into  thicker   dark- 
ness.    Four  old  gray-haired  women  ap- 


i 


# 


# 


TEE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 


53 


pear  at  the  door  of  Faust's  new  palace ; 
he  hears  their  words,  he  knows  their 
names.  They  are  Want,  Guilt,  Care, 
and  Need.  They  hold  their  conference 
at  the  gate,  and  Care  passes  in  through 
the  key-hole  and  becomes  the  guest. 
I  know  nothing  in  poetry  more  solemn 
than  this  scene.  In  whispered  words 
the  four  had  uttered  without  that  an- 
other form  is  drawing  near  —  the  form 
of  Death.  As  Faust  hears  it  he  trem- 
bles, for  to  him  it  is  a  terrible  word. 
And  one  who  knows  how  terrible  the 
thought  of  death  always  was  to  Goethe, 
how  he  refused  to  speak  of  it  and  to 
think  of  it,  can  understand  with  what 
feelings  he,  a  man  of  eighty-one,  penned 
this  scene,  this  picture  of  his  own  life, 
and  wrote,  so  to  speak,  his  own  epitaph. 
Care  enters  ;  Care  utters  the  words 
which  for  the  first  time  bow  down  this 
strong  man,  whose  age   is   represented 


64         THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 

at   this  period  to  be  a   full   hundred. 
At    length   Care    breathes    upon    him, 
and  Faust  is  made  bhnd.     Yet  though 
blind  and  old,  there  comes  to  him,  even 
then,  the  inspiration  of   a   new   hope. 
All  at  once  he   seizes   the   conception 
that  he  will  build  new  cities  and  per- 
fect new  plans  and  finish  the  task  of 
gaining  dominion   from    the   sea,   that 
other  men  may  be  made  happy,  that,  in 
the  language  of  our  modern  time,  the 
world  may  be  the  better  for  his  living 
in  it,  or,  in  the  nobler  language  of  our 
Saviour,  that  he  may  lose  his  life  and 
yet  find  it.     In  his  blindness,  in  his  old 
age,  he  seizes  his  shovel  and  begins  his 
glorious  and  self-forgetful  work.     We 
see  at  a  glance  that  we  are  here  not 
only  close  to  the  altruism  of  Herbert 
Spencer,  but  to  the  highest  secrets  of 
the  Christian  scheme  of  life.    And  so 
he  dies,  in  the  triumph  of  his  career. 


*• 


TBE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST.         55 

when,  at  last,  the  hour  has  come  in 
which  for  the  first  time  he  can  say, 
Stay,  thou  art  so  fair. 

And  then  Mephistopheles  and  liis 
harpy  attendants  claim  his  soul.  For, 
technically,  Faust  has  lost  his  wager ; 
but  heavenly  spirits  appear  and  refuse 
to  surrender  him,  and  fierce  is  the  bat- 
tle of  words  which  is  waged.  Yet,  be- 
cause Faust  has  not  attained,  because  he 
has  only  looked  into  the  promised  land, 
and,  also,  because  the  devil  is  impotent 
in  the  face  of  penitence,  therefore,  with 
all  his  clamor  and  bluster,  and  that  of 
his  attendants,  he  cannot  take  the  soul 
he  claims.  The  wager  cannot  be  ex- 
acted. The  domain  in  which  Faust  has 
won  his  triumph  over  himself  is  not  ad- 
mitted to  be  within  the  province  which 
Satan  rules.  It  is  the  victory  of  the 
Right,  of  the  Truth ;  it  is  the  victory 
of  God,  and  not  even  the  devil  has  a 


66         THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 

lien  upon  the  domain  of  God.*^  And  so 
Faust  is  saved ;  and  the  poem  comes  to 
an  end  with  such  splendors  and  glories 
and  ineffable  magnificences  as  no  lan- 
guage of  mine  can  possibly  suggest ;  and 
it  is  all  penetrated  and  punctuated  with 
the  sharp,  harsh,  biting  taunts  and  defi- 
ance of  Mephistopheles,  over  and  above 
which,  in  great  organ  tones,  sounds  the 
heavenly  anthem,  the  angelic  symphony. 
Saints  now  glorified,  the  spirits  of  just 
men  made  perfect,  come  one  after  the 
other  and  welcome  him;  a  chorus  of 
blessed  boys  issues  forth  to  meet  him ; 
angels  and  younger  angels,  and  yet 
more  perfect  angels,  vie  with  each  other 
in  their  jubilant  tumults  of  rejoicing, 
and  all  heaven  comes  forth  to  meet  the 
man  who  has  passed  his  trials,  has  lived 
his  life,  and  is  more  than  conqueror. 
But,  oh !  the  pathos  of  that  which  re- 
mains.    Up  to  this  time  it  is  hke  Mil- 


i1 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST.        57 

ton,  it  is  like  Handel,  it  is  like  the  great 
Lift  Up  chorus  of  Gounod's  "  Redemp- 
tion ; "  but  the  end  is  ushered  in  with 
notes  so  tenderly  and  tremulously  hu- 
man that  even  in  their  sweet  humanity 
they  utter  a  louder  Gloria  than  that 
wliich  went  before ;  for  Mary  Magdala 
is  there  with  her  welcome,  and  the 
Woman  of  Samaria  is  there  with  her 
welcome,  and  Mary  of  Egypt  is  there 
with  her  welcome,  and,  oh  !  how  shall  I 
write  it !  with  what  tender  suffusions  of 
feeling,  and  almost  with  tears,  do  we  go 
on  to  read,  "  One  of  the  penitents,  for- 
merly named  Margaret,"  pressing  to- 
wards him ;  she,  too,  even  she,  welcom- 
ing in  heaven  her  lover,  her  betrayer, 
the  great  sinner,  now  redeemed  and  ac- 
cepted, amid  the  splendors  of  the  skies. 
The  ewig-weibliche  even  there;  the  ever- 
womanly  still  drawing  on;  even  there 
the  power  of  the  divine  love  triumphant. 


1^31 


58 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST, 


It  goes  without  saying  that  the  reader 
has  been  running  his  own  parallels  be- 
tween this  story  and  the  whole  line  of 
Christian  tradition  ;  the  regular  teach- 
ings of  the  church.  And  I  must  not 
omit  to  say  that  in  this  last  scene  Goethe 
has  gone  beyond  what  I  have  indicated ; 
he  has  not  left  us  with  the  bald  natural- 
ism that  a  man  who  is  noble  enough 
and  striving  enough  solves  the  whole 
problem  of  life.  I  do  not  want  to 
read  into  the  poem  more  than  I  find 
there ;  but  I  do  find  in  the  last  scenes 
the  recognition  of  divine  love,  of  di- 
vine grace ;  there  is  the  moving  out  of 
heavenly  forces  toward  this  man  so  sore 
beset  with  the  temptations  of  hfe.  The 
angels  who  escort  Faust  to  the  immortal 
regions  thus  sing :  — 

"  Gerettet  ist  das  edle  Glied 
Der  Geisterwelt  vom  Bosen ; 
Wer  immer  strebend  sich  bemiiht 
Den  kdnnen  wir  erl5sen ; 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST.         59 

Und  hat  an  ihm  die  Liebe  gar 

Von  oben  Theil  genommen, 
Begegnet  ihm  die  selige  Schaar 

Mit  herzlichen  Willkommen." 

*'  Saved  is  this  noble  soul  from  ill, 

Our  spirit  peer.     Wlioever 
Strives  forward  with  unswerving  wiU, 

Him  can  we  aye  deliver; 
And  if  with  him  celestial  love 

Hath  taken  part,  —  to  meet  him 
Come  down  the  angels  from  above; 

With  cordial  hail  they  greet  him." 

Is  not  this  a  poetical  rendering  of  St. 
Paul's  "Work  out  your  own  salvation 
with  fear  and  trembling ;  for  it  is  God 
that  worketh  within  you  to  will  and  to 
do  after  his  good  pleasure  "  ?  ^^ 

And  yet  I  cannot  claim  that  Goethe, 
either  in  his  own  life  or  in  that  por- 
trayal of  his  career  which  he  gives  in 
"Faust,"  attained  to  what  we  have  a 
right  to  call  the  Christian  standard. 
When  Hermann  Grimm  says  that  "Faust 


vaiBSiiiilM 


60 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 


is  the  gospel  of  human  salvation  through 
human  activity,"  he  gives  what  on  the 
whole  comes   the   nearest   to   Goethe's 

* 

aim.     The  great  Christian  recognitions 
at  the   close,  the   coming   out   of   the 
heavenly  love   to   meet   the   man  who 
has  advanced   towards   it,  is   after  all 
delayed  to  a  point  where  we  must  con- 
fess that  the  most  of  the  battle  has  been 
fought    alone.      Every   now  and   then 
Goethe  comes  so  near  the  Christian  Hues 
that  we  hold  our   breath  and  wonder 
whether  he  is  to  be  the  greatest  of  all 
our  allies  ]  and  then  we  find  that  only 
in  a  constructive  sense,  not  in  the  plain 
use  of  words,  can  we  claim  liim.     I  may 
refer  to  that  touching  passage  in  the 
First  Part  where  Faust,  just  on  the  verge 
of  suicide  because  he  cannot  solve  the 
problem  of  life,  with  all  his  learning,  is 
recalled  by  the  Easter  bells  and  song ; 
but,   after  all,   candor    compels    us   to 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 


61 


grant  that  it  is  not  because  of  the  in- 
ner meaning  of  the  resurrection  hymn 
"Christ  is  Risen,"  but  because  that 
great  strain  of  faith  and  the  Easter 
morning  bells  touch  his  memory,  bring 
back  his  youth,  and  with  youth  his  hope, 
and  he  stays  his  hand.  So  also  that 
New  Testament  exposition  in  the  First 
Part  of  St.  John's  verse  "  In  the  begin- 
ning was  the  Word."  Here,  when  he 
passes  on  step  by  step  and  reads  into 
the  meaning  that  the  Word  is  not  the 
mere  communication  of  God's  thought 
in  language,  but  in  action,  we  have  to 
ask.  Is  Goethe  with  us  or  is  he  against 
us?  But  when  we  pass  to  the  great 
strain  of  the  poem,  there  is  no  doubt  in 
my  mind,  and  I  think  there  can  be  in 
no  other's  mind,  that  while  not  bring- 
ing out  with  any  clearness  and  fulness 
the  manner  in  which  the  divine  love 
operates  in  drawing  men  outward  and 


62 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 


upward,  —  while  quite  excluding  those 
uames  and  methods  which  we  wontedly 
associate  with  the  Christian  faith,  —  yet 
on  the  judgment  side,  on  that  side  which 
is  most  neglected  to-day,  the  woe  of  sin, 
the  dreadful  penalty  of  sin,  the  stupid, 
blind,  gross  character  of  evil,  the  wreck 
of  life  when  in  aUiance  with  the  devil, 
all  this  is  told  with  a  power  and  a  range 
of  illustiation  which  must  make  the 
book  a  memorable  ally  to  all  who  are 
striving  to  warn  men  from  the  wiatli  of 
the  divine  Judge."  The  poem  could 
not  rise  above  the  level  of  Goethe's  own 
life,  but  it  could  rise  to  that  level ;  a 
life  which  had  once  been  tempestuous 
and  wild,  fidl  of  episodes  which  men 
read  and  do  not  forget,  but  a  life  which 
in  its  latest  decades  was  passing  on  into 
calmness  and  strength  and  outgiving 
and  a  wise  espousal  of  all  broadest  in- 
terests.    I  protest  against  this  forget- 


.§ 


^      ^ 


TEE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 


63 


ting  of  the  aged  Goethe  in  the  constant 
iteration  of  the  deeds  and  loves  of  the 
youthful  Goethe,  as  I  protest  against 
the  forgetting  of  the  Second  Part  of 
"  Faust "  because  the  First  is  so  thrill- 
ing, so  tragic,  so  full  of  the  fire  and 
fascination  of  youth. 

I  sum  up,  then,  the  upward  flight  of 
this  man  as  in  three  soaring  circles :  the 
first,  the  quest  of  earthly  beauty ;  the 
second,  the  quest  of  spiritual  beauty ;  the 
third,  the  quest  of  heavenly  beauty. 
From  the  first  two  he  fell  back ;  but  in 
the  third  he  conquered.  Or,  if  I  may 
yet  again  depict  his  upward  striving 
as  the  search  for  truth,  it  would  be  the 
longing  of  the  soul  after  truth  gained 
by  the  bitter  experience  of  life;  then, 
by  seeking  beauty  as  revealed  in  culture 
and  art  and  grace ;  then,  by  joy  at- 
tained in  the  efforts  made  not  for  self 
but   for  man ;  and  lastly,  in   the   hal- 


sai 


> 


64 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST. 


lowed  blessedness  which  comes  from 
union  with  the  glorified  and  in  the  fel- 
lowships of  heaven. 

I  will  cheerfully  confess  that  not  for 
years  have  I  taken  up  a  study  which 
more  puts  me  in  the  way  of  high 
thoughts  and  holy  living  than  the  study 
of  "  Faust ; "  and  certainly  never  a 
poem  so  full  of  intellectual  spui\  As 
a  work  of  culture,  it,  of  course,  out- 
ranks the  greatest  productions  of  the 
human  mind.  Take  its  extent  as  com- 
pared with  the  longest  of  Shakespeare's 
greatest  works,  take  its  learning  as  com- 
pared with  Milton's  greatest  works,  take 
its  range  as  compared  \\ith  Dante,  take 
its  pictures  of  life  as  compared  with 
Homer,  and  it  will  be  seen  that  in  its 
aggregated  qualities  it  may  be  safely 
called  the  higliest  achievement  of  the 
human  mind.^^  Goethe,  the  most  fur- 
nished   man    of    our    time,    the    most 


(f. 


i 


i 


THE  SALVATION  OF  FAUST.  65 

powerful,   the   most   experienced,  gave 
his  whole  life  to  its  production  ;  lived 
it   out   year  by  year   and   decade    by 
decade,  stopped  when  he   had  written 
out  his  own  experience  up  to  a  certain 
date,  and  then  lived  on  till   from   his 
life    new   lessons    should    be   distilled. 
But  he  put  into  it  not  only  all  that  he 
was,  he  put  into  it  all  that  he  had  read 
and  thought   and   seen;  all   that   men 
throughout  the   entii-e   past  had  accu- 
mulated.    His  greatest  contemporaries, 
Carlyle  in  England ;  William  von  Hum- 
boldt,  Schelling,   Hegel   in    Germany; 
Napoleon  in  Prance,^^  all  looked  up  to 
him  as  the  one  gi-eatest  man  of  their 
time ;  and  all  that  he  had  garnered  out 
of  the  richest  treasuries  of  the  present 
and  of  the  past,  he  has  sifted,  culled, 
condensed,  and  packed  away  for  us  in 
the    wonderful    work    which    we    call 
"  Faust." 


NOTES. 


1. 

It  forms  no  part  of  my  plan  to  enter  upon  a 
discussion  of  the  origin  of  the  Faust  legend  ; 
certainly  not  to  trace  it  in  its  early  course.  To 
a  certain  extent  the  same  story  may  be  fomid  in 
one  of  Calderon's  plays;  and  it  is  perhaps  not 
too  much  to  say  that  it  is  the  substantial  thought 
which  underlies  the  temptation  of  Adam  and 
Eve.  But  the  Faust  legend  proper,  that  which 
comes  out  into  full  light  in  the  early  part  of  the 
sixteenth  century,  has  been  traced  by  my  friend, 
Mr.  Richardson,  of  the  Hartford  Theological 
Seminary  Library,  with  characteristic  thorough- 
ness, and  forms  an  exceedingly  interesting  study 
taken  by  itself  and  without  relation  to  that 
phase  which  is  my  special  theme  in  this  essay. 

Mm 

The  best  German  edition  of  "  Faust "  is  Schro- 
er*s,  in  two  volumes,  badly  printed,  indeed,  like 


<t 


NOTES.  67 

most  German   books,   but   fully   annotated  and 
made  convenient  in  many  ways.     Leper's,  too,  is 
an  excellent  and  handy  edition.   There  are  others 
which  are  good,  and  the  readings  do  not  vary 
enough  to  make  much  choice.     Of  the  transla- 
tions, Bayard  Taylor's  and  Miss  Swanwick's  are 
the  best.     The  former  is  beautifully  printed  and 
profusely  illustrated  with  notes.     The  latter  is 
quite  equal  to  Taylor's   as  a  translation  and   is 
almost  without   notes.     Miss   Swanwick   is   the 
translator   of  Euripides,   and  has,  like   Taylor, 
achieved  a  wonderful  success  in  keeping  to  the 
original  metres  of  the  poem.     There  are  some 
portions   of   "Faust"   beautifully  rendered   by 
Shelley.     Yet  he  who  can  easily  read  German 
will  find  that  to  come  to  it  by  any  translation 
is  to  lose  a  great  charm.     It  does  not  seem  the 
same  work ;  it  has  a  foreign  look ;  and  it  appears 
a  hopeless  task  to  cause  any  one  who  does  not 
read  German  to  see  and  feel  its  exquisite  quali- 
ties.    This,  which  is  true  of  almost  all   trans- 
lations, is  eminently  true  of  "  Faust,"  and  one 
might  say  that  it  is  worth  the  pains  of  learning 
a  somewhat  difficult  language  for  the  sake   of 
coming  into  the  atmosphere  in  which  one   can 
admire  "  Faust." 


68 


NOTES, 


The  Concord  lectures  on  Goethe,  and  Snider's 
two  volumes  on  "  Faust,"  are  so  well-known  that 
I  need  only  refer  to  them. 

3. 

I  cannot  refrain  from  referring  those  who 
may  wish  to  go  even  further  in  their  study  of 
"  Faust "  than  I  have  taken  them  in  this  work 
to  Professor  Boyesen's  (of  Cornell)  admirable 
W.,  not  U.ge/on  Goethe  and  Se. -lie.  which 
embraces  as  a  distinct  feature  an  analysis  of  the 
*'  Faust."  It  is  very  fair,  and  so  far  as  the  First 
Part  is  concerned,  very  fuU,  although  the  whole 
is  embraced  in  about  one  hundred  and  thirty 
pages.  Elsewhere  I  refer  to  Coupland's  English 
book,  which  devotes  much  space  to  the  Second 
Part,  although  it  lacks  a  certain  dignity  of  tone 
which  characterizes  Professor  Boyesen's  pages. 

4. 

Of  course  we  take  for  granted  in  this  discus- 
sion that  Goethe  has  so  taken  possession  of  the 
old  theme  that  practically  we  ignore  its  rudi- 
mentary form  in  the  "  Puppet  Plays,"  tlie 
"Folks  Plays,"  and  the  like.  If  we  are  con- 
tent to  regard  the  modern  versions  in  music  and 


NOTES. 


69 


*> 


r 


the  spoken  drama  as  merely  the  old  and  un- 
developed legend  put  into  shape  for  our  time,  we 
may  perhaps  think  them  as  complete  as  Mar- 
lowe's contemporaries  thought  his  work  when 
it  was  put  upon  the  stage;  but  in  fact,  the 
Goethe  "  Faust "  is  that  from  which  all  the  mod- 
ern adopters  have  drawn,  and  therefore  their 
work  is  but  fragmentary,  for  they  have  not  gone 
beyond  the  First  Part  of  Goethe's  work. 

5. 

The  ablest  and  amplest  discussion  of  these 
questions  is  found  in  the  last  edition  of  Kuno 
Fischer's  work  on  "  Faust."  He  is  not  to  be 
confounded  with  Frederick  Vischer,  an  eariier  and 
also  a  very  able  commentator.  Kuno  Fischer  has 
traced  the  history  of  Faust  with  great  thorough- 
ness and  with  great  fairness.  He  shows  the 
close  relation  between  Goethe's  conception  of  the 
Erdgeist  or  Earth  Spirit  and  the  soaring  nature 
of  the  youthful  Goethe.  He  shows,  too,  how  the 
poet's  half-playful  conception  of  Mephistopheles, 
the  roguish,  elfish,  witty,  wily  spirit,  the  "  com- 
panion "  whom  the  Lord  gave  to  Faust,  passed 
in  time  into  the  malignant  and  truly  diabolical 
Mephistopheles  as  he  appears  in  the  portions  of 


\ 


V 


70 


NOTES. 


NOTES. 


71 


the  First  Part  which  were  written  last,  as  well 
as  in  the  Second  Part.  He  is  also  exceedingly 
thorough  in  his  studies  as  to  the  dates  of  composi- 
tion, and  though  not  diffuse,  he  yet  brings  to- 
gether into  his  work  of  less  than  five  hundred 
open  print  pages,  a  great  mass  of  information 
touching  both  Goethe  and  his  "  Faust." 

6. 

Goethe  societies  exist  in  neariy  all  the  coun- 
tries where  literature  is  most  honored.  In  Eng- 
land, such  men  as  Edward  Dowden,  the  Shake- 
spearean commentator,  preside  over  them ;  and 
the  Goethe  society  of  Germany  embraces  the 
most  eminent  men  in  all  departments  of  science, 
art,  and  letters.  The  recent  opening  of  Goethe's 
private  archives  in  Weimar  and  the  conveying 
of  these  to  a  special  Goethe  society  is  perhaps 
the  most  striking  literary  movement  of  recent 
time ;  and  the  publication  of  the  results  is  one 
of  the  most  eagerly  looked-for  events  in  the  great 
circle  of  scholars. 

7. 
It  seems  to  me  that  no  charge  against  Goethe's 
character,  certainly  in  his  youth,  is  less  grounded 
than  that  he  was  a  man  all  intellect  and  no 


heart.  Not  to  go  beyond  the  Frederica  epi- 
sode, is  it  possible  to  read  his  diary  and  the 
letters  of  those  days  and  not  see  the  heart- 
struggles  of  the  man  ?  The  fear  of  offending  his 
father,  and  perhaps  still  more  the  dread  of  dis- 
pleasing his  sister,  the  instinct  of  incompatibility 
between  himself  and  this  young  untrained  girl, 
causing  him  to  decide  that  he  dared  not  go  on, 
all  this  is  no  argument  that  he  was  not  a  man  of 
warm,  true,  and  honorable  emotions,  yet  at  the 
command  of  a  wise  control.  He  had  not,  per- 
haps, the  passionate  sensibility  of  Schiller;  but 
in  the  capacity  of  loving,  he  was,  I  think,  his 
equal. 

Nor  do  I  think  it  the  result  of  a  thorough 
knowledge  of  Goethe's  character  to  charge  upon 
him  a  willingness  to  trifle  with  hearts.  He  had 
a  wonderful  openness  to  all  fresh,  buoyant  na- 
tures in  both  men  and  women,  and  in  his  early 
Weimar  years  we  find  that  in  both  men  and 
women  he  had  a  joyful,  enthusiastic  delight.  In 
this  he  was  different  from  Schiller,  who  was 
drawn  almost  exclusively  to  women ;  his  affec- 
tion for  Korner  and  a  few  others  emphasizing 
the  delicate  sensibility  which  made  his  friend- 
ships with  women  so  conspicuous  an  element  in 


m  i 


72 


NOTES. 


NOTES. 


73 


his  character.     But  Goethe  loved  life  as  life : 
and  I  do  not  find  my  old  and  inherited  notion 
that  he  experimented  on  young  girls'  souls,  con- 
finned  by  later  studies.     He  was  easily  drawn 
to   artless,   healthy,  earnest   natures;   to   spirits 
like  his  Margaret ;  and  yet  when  he  found  that 
he  was  being  swept  into  an   attachment  which 
would  not  result  in  his  permanent  happiness,  he 
could  fly,  as  he  did  again  and  again.    In  the  one 
case  where   this  capacity  of  escape  failed  him, 
in  that  of  the  woman  who  became  his  wife,  there 
was  a  remarkable  complexity  of  conditions :  she 
was  clearly  one  of  those  robust  natures,  skilled  in 
the  arts  of  housekeeping  and  able  to  minister  to 
the  physical  wants  of   a  man  whose   mind  was 
cheered  and  kept  active  by  women  like  Char- 
lotte von  Stein,  and  whose  social  tastes  were  met 
not  only  by  the  ladies  of  the  Weimar  Court,  but 
by  gifted  women  like  Corona  Schroeter.    With 
all  these  to  warm  and  stimulate  his  intellect,  he 
wanted  the  repose  and  comfort  of  a  home ;  and 
he  found  it  in  the  society  of  a  woman  so  common 
in  birth  and  so  unendowed  with  the  graces  which 
would  commend  her,  that  it  is  still  a  wonder  to 
thousands  that  Goethe  could  have  made  her  the 
intimate  companion  of   his   life.     It  is  obvious 


tl  '^'  ' 


^> 


I 


♦>  i 


^1  « 


( 


that  not  even  yet  have  we  an  adequate  knowl- 
edge of  Christine  Vulpius  on  the  spiritual  side ; 
but  that  there  were  gifts  and  devotion  of  heart, 
and  more  capacity  of  understanding  Goethe 
than  we  have  commonly  supposed,  I  firmly  be- 
lieve. 

8. 
I  cannot  agree  with  those  commentators  who 
are  so  positive  in  identifying  Margaret  (or 
Gretchen,  as  she  is  called  in  many  of  the  oldest 
scenes)  with  any  person.  To  assert  that  she 
is  the  portrait  of  the  Frankfort  working-girl 
Gretchen,  described  with  such  spirit  in  Goethe's 
autobiography,  or  to  assert  with  equal  positive- 
ness  that  she  is  or  is  not  the  close  portrait  of 
Frederica,  is  to  encroach  on  a  domain  which  is 
not  our  own.  I  admit  that  Goethe's  heroes  and 
heroines  are  life  studies  in  a  very  different  sense 
from  Schiller's ;  and  in  many  cases,  notably 
and  by  his  own  confession  in  his  borrowing 
many  features  of  Mephistopheles  from  his  caus- 
tic friend  Merck,  he  has  portrayed  men  and 
women  whom  he  knew;  yet  seldom  in  such 
closeness  as  to  allow  us  to  dogmatize  on  them. 
It  is  my  impression  that  in  the  Margaret  of 
"  Faust,"  there   are  features  drawn  from   both 


m  i 


72  NOTES. 

Ms  character.  But  Goethe  loved  life  as  life : 
and  I  do  not  find  my  old  and  inherited  notion 
that  he  experimented  on  young  girls'  souls,  con- 
firmed by  later  studies.  He  was  easily  drawn 
to  artless,  healthy,  earnest  natures;  to  spirits 
like  his  Margaret ;  and  yet  when  he  found  that 
he  was  being  swept  into  an  attachment  which 
would  not  result  in  his  permanent  happiness,  he 
could  fly,  as  he  did  again  and  again.  In  the  one 
case  where  this  capacity  of  escape  failed  him, 
in  that  of  the  woman  who  became  his  wife,  there 
was  a  remarkable  complexity  of  conditions :  she 
was  clearly  one  of  those  robust  natures,  skilled  in 
the  arts  of  housekeeping  and  able  to  minister  to 
the  physical  wants  of  a  man  whose  mind  was 
cheered  and  kept  active  by  women  like  Char- 
lotte von  Stein,  and  whose  social  tastes  were  met 
not  only  by  the  ladies  of  the  Weimar  Court,  but 
by  gifted  women  like  Corona  Schroeter.  With 
all  these  to  warm  and  stimulate  liis  intellect,  he 
wanted  the  repose  and  comfort  of  a  home ;  and 
he  found  it  in  the  society  of  a  woman  so  common 
in  birth  and  so  unendowed  with  the  graces  which 
would  commend  her,  that  it  is  still  a  wonder  to 
thousands  that  Goethe  could  have  made  her  the 
intimate  companion  of  his   life.     It  is  obvious 


NOTES. 


73 


^1  i^ 


4f  I 


%l    t 


( 


that  not  even  yet  have  we  an  adequate  knowl- 
edge of  Christine  Vulpius  on  the  spiritual  side ; 
but  that  there  were  gifts  and  devotion  of  heart, 
and  more  capacity  of  understanding  Goethe 
than  we  have  commonly  supposed,  I  firmly  be- 
lieve. 

8. 
I  cannot  agree  with  those  commentators  who 
are  so  positive  in  identifying  Margaret  (or 
Gretchen,  as  she  is  called  in  many  of  the  oldest 
scenes)  with  any  person.  To  assert  that  she 
is  the  portrait  of  the  Frankfort  working-girl 
Gretchen,  described  with  such  spirit  in  Goethe's 
autobiography,  or  to  assert  with  equal  positive- 
ness  that  she  is  or  is  not  the  close  portrait  of 
Frederica,  is  to  encroach  on  a  domain  which  is 
not  our  own.  I  admit  that  Goethe's  heroes  and 
heroines  are  life  studies  in  a  very  different  sense 
from  Schiller's ;  and  in  many  cases,  notably 
and  by  his  own  confession  in  his  borrowing 
many  features  of  Mephistopheles  from  his  caus- 
tic friend  Merck,  he  has  portrayed  men  and 
women  whom  he  knew;  yet  seldom  in  such 
closeness  as  to  allow  us  to  dogmatize  on  them. 
It  is  my  impression  that  in  the  Margaret  of 
*'  Faust,"  there   are  features  drawn  from   both 


74 


NOTES. 


the  Frankfort  Gretchen  and  the  lovely  girl  of 
Sesenheim,  the  pastor's  daughter ;  that  she  has 
the  peasant  quality  from  the  former,  the  naive, 
sweet,  artless  charm  from  the  latter. 

9. 

It  is  a  little  singular  that  the  publication  of 
Goethe*s  **  Faust  "  in  1790  called  out  Uttle  enthu- 
siasm;  a  few,   like  Steffens  and  the  Schlegels, 
recognized  its  ability  and  spoke  with  warmth  of 
its  wonderful  language  ;  but  the  book  made  little 
stir.     Not  so  when  the  whole  First  Part  was  pub- 
lished in  1808  ;   then  it  was  hailed  with  acclama- 
tion, and  from  that  time  to  this  there  has  been 
a  chorus  of  rapture  over  its  singularly  beautiful 
style,  its  strength,  smoothness,  fire,  melody,  and 
verbal  felicity.     The  Second  Part  has  not  been 
judged  so  leniently.     It  is  the  fashion  to  speak 
of  it  as  unpoetical,  crabbed,  pedantic,  verbose  ; 
as   exhibiting    frequent     marks    of    senility;    a 
charge  which  I  find  greatly  exaggerated.     Per- 
haps, as  a  whole,  the  Second  Part  is  not  so  plas- 
tic as  the  First ;  it  has  many  words  which  smell 
of  the  midnight  oil ;  but,  as  a  whole,  there  is  the 
same   liberal  use  of   the  terse,  strong,  people's 
words;    the   same    smoothness  and  finish  and 


I 


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C        ( 


J^      < 


( 


NOTES. 


75 


melody.  If  I  may  cite  the  first  examples  which 
occur  to  me,  —the  waking  of  Faust  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  Second  Part,  the  scene  in  which  the 
aged  Philemon  and  Baucis  appear  at  the  opening 
of  the  fifth  act,  the  monologue  of  Helen  in  the 
third  act,  and  the  wonderful  last  scene  of  all,  —  I 
may  say  that  they  cannot  be  thought  for  a  mo- 
ment inferior  to  the  very  best  writing  in  the  First 
Part ;  though,  of  course,  lacking  in  that  fiery 
quality  which  is  felt  everywhere  in  the  older  por- 
tion of  the  play. 

10. 
"  Faust  "  was  probably  conceived  as  early  as 
1769,  when  Goethe  was  but  twenty  years  old  ;  but 
he  did  not  begin  to  compose  the  scenes  much  before 
1773.  During  that  and  the  following  years  the 
most  of  the  first  sketch  or  Fragment  was  written. 
This  was  published  in  1790,  and  has  been  re- 
cently reprinted.  It  contains  most  of  the  First 
Part,  with  certain  important  omissions  which  the 
special  student  will  discover  at  once,  such  as  the 
Dedication  and  the  Prologue  in  Heaven. 

11. 

In  a  conversation  with  his  friend  Eckermann, 
March  11,  1828,  Goethe   said:  "There  was  a 


76 


NOTES. 


time  in  my  life  when  I  could  easily  produce  a 
printed  sheet  day  by  day.      My  *  Geschwister '  I 
wrote   in  three  days,  and   my  *  Clavigo/  as  you 
know,  in  eight.     I  cannot  do  that  now  ;  and  yet  I 
cannot  even  in  my  old  age  lament  a  want  of  pro- 
ductivity.    Ten  or  twelve  years  ago,  in  the  happy 
days  which  followed  the  war  of  the  Liberation, 
when  I  was  writing  the  '  Songs  in  the  Divan,' 
I  was  prolific  enough,  and  used  to  compose  two 
or  three  daily,  writing  wherever  I  happened  to 
be,  in  the  country,  at  a  hotel,  or  in  a  carriage. 
Now,  while  I  am  working  at  the  Second  Part  of 
my  *  Faust,'  I   can   compose  only  in   the  early 
morning,  when  I  feel  myself  refreshed  with  sleep 
and  have  not  entered  into  the  vexations  of  a  new 
day.     But   how   little   it   is   that   I    accomplish 
under  the  happiest  circumstances;  only  a  page 
at  best ;  generally  not  more  than  a  handbreadth ; 
and  when  I  am  not  in  a  good  frame  of  mind,  still 
less." 

12. 

It  may  not  be  known  to  every  reader  that 
Goethe's  Second  Part  of  "  Faust  "  is  now  played 
very  frequently  in  Germany,  and  that  by  its  adap- 
tation to  the  taste  of  our  time  in  its  love  of  the 
gorgeous  and  the  supernatural,  it,  like  the  opera 


t 

I"  'I 


/ 


f  I 

[ 


NOTES. 


77 


of  the  latest  school,  has  a  very  great  charm.     It 
is   not   unfrequently  played   in  Germany   as   a 
trilogy,  occupying  three  consecutive  nights ;  and 
the  resources  of  the  stage,  which  in  Goethe's  time 
would  have  been  entirely  inadequate  to  present 
nearly  all  the  mythological  features  of  the  Second 
Part,  are  not  much  more  drawn  upon  than  they 
are  in  the  more  exacting  works  of  Wagner.     It 
does  not  seem  possible  that  Goethe,  or  any  of  his 
friends,  should  have  regarded  it  as  feasible  Uiat 
the  Second  Part  of  "  Faust  "  should  ever  be  pre- 
sented on  the   stage ;   but  even  in   minor  thea- 
tres, such  as  that  of  Mannheim,  this  is  done  with 
great  success.     Frederick  Vischer,  the  commen- 
tator who  of  all  is  perhaps  the  most  outspoken  in 
his  likes  and  dislikes,  and  who  is  always  enter- 
taining even  if  he  be  not  convincing,  attributes 
all  this  to  the  degeneracy  of  our  time ;  the  taste 
for  the  gaudy  and  the  merely  spectacular.     But 
Vischer  has  no  moderation  in  his  condemnation 
of    all    that    relates    to    the    Second    Part   of 
**  Faust ; "  he  condemns  the  style,  the  substance, 
the  whole  work,  considers  it  the  product  of  a  de- 
praved taste,  and  in  no  way  to  be  compared  with 
the  power  of  the  First  Part.     He  has  no  fear  of 
Lttper,  or  Diintzer,  or  any  other  of  the  wholesale 


TSSSWKSB 


f  i  i 


78 


NOTES. 


admirers,  and  strikes  out  always  in  the  most 
vigorous  and  entertaining  fashion.  And  yet  his 
views  have  had  but  litUe  convincing  weight  with 
readers. 

13. 
The  reader  will,  of  course,  remember  that 
Scott  translated  "  G5tz  "  in  his  earlier  days,  and 
caught  from  it  the  fire  which  afterwards  burned 
»o  brightly  in  his  poems  and  tales.  It  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  Goethe's  influence,  through 
Scott,  on  English  literature  is  one  of  the  grand- 
est instances  of  indirect  working  which  the  his- 
tory of  authorship  exhibits. 

It  is  indeed  true  that  subsequently  Faust  ad- 
dressing Mephistopheles  by  the   title   of  "  over- 
seer "  enlists  his  aid  in  his  building  projects  ;  but 
the  whole  tone  of  the  passage  shows  that  the  old 
magical  mania  is  gone;  he  wants  to  hear  the 
honest  ring  of   the  spade  and  the   shovel;    he 
wants  to  see  the  busy  crowds  of  men  all  active  in 
their  tasks.     The  language  of  Mephistopheles  is 
plainly  that  of  surrender ;  he  sees  and  confesses 
that  Faust  is  no  longer  in  his  toUs.     That  which 
is  called  in  the  Christian  scheme  of  life  "  con- 


i   ■  J 


4A    I.  'f 

^^      Bii. 


( 


NOTES. 


79 


sciousness  of  sin  "  is  revealed  in  various  passages ; 
among  others,  in  the  interview  with  Care,  the 
man's  sense  of  failure  comes  plainly  into  sight. 

15. 

Since  writing  this  passage,  I  find  in  Coupland's 
"  Spirit  of  Faust  "  (London,  George  Bell  &  Sons) 
a  passage  which  confirms  this  view,  and  which  I 
wiU  quote  here :  — 

"Although  Mephistopheles  sees  himself  out- 
witted and  imagines  himself  defrauded,  he  has 
really  not  won,  but  lost,  his  wager.  Faust  signed 
away  his  soul  on  condition  that  Mephistopheles 
should  procure  him  a  moment  of  bliss  sufficient 
to  make  him  declare  that  he  could  wish  to  linger 
lazily  in  such  happiness  for  evermore.  Faust  has 
not  lost,  but  gained,  the  day  for  two  reasons: 
first,  because  it  is  not  Mephistopheles  who  has 
brought  his  bliss;  secondly,  because  that  bliss 
was  not  the  bliss  of  ease,  but  a  bliss  of  the  fullest 
activity.  Mephistopheles  certainly  did  not  help 
him  to  the  rapture  he  felt  at  the  fatal  moment ; 
on  the  contrary,  it  came  as  a  consequence  of  his 
unaided  effort.  Mephistopheles  had  done  his 
last  service  when  he  burned  the  cottage  of  Phile- 
mon,  but  it  was  Faust's  own  unsuggested  scheme 


80 


NOTES. 


NOTES, 


81 


which  exerted  the  final  fascination.  Again,  it  was 
no  moment  of  passive  enjoyment  which  he  pro- 
nounced so  fair ;  it  was  no  present  moment  at 
all ;  it  was  a  vision  of  a  remote  future  when  he 
would  be  merely  a  spectator  of  the  realized  de- 
velopment of  the  most  powerful  creative  work  of 
his  whole  life.  An  actively  engaged  people 
toiling  on  soil  which  he  had  procured  for  them 
—  such  was  the  dream  which  he  beheld  trans- 
lated into  fact  in  this  remote  future  that  brought 
him  the  perfect  moment.  Faust  had  baffled 
Mephistopheles  aU  his  life,  because  his  self-ex- 
pression was  not  the  self-satisfaction  the  fiend 
had  intended ;  it  was  not  self-indulgence,  but 
BeMevelopment,  self-progress,  an  ever-expand- 
ing  self  which  furthered  the  life  of  a  larger  and 
larger  circle  of  mankind." 

This  work  of  Coupland's,  of  366  pages  clear 
type,  so  different  from  most  of  the  badly  printed 
German  works  on  "  Faust,"  is  an  admirable  ex- 
position, and  is  invaluable  for  one  who  does  not 
easily  master  the  German  language. 

16. 
It  is  one  of  the  strange  and  discordant  notes 
of  onr  time  that  whUe  some  old-fashioned  people 


i 


> 


are  bewailing,  and  seemingly  with  justice,  the 
silence  of  the  modern  pulpit  on  the  tremendous 
penalties  of  sin,  this  theme  has  passed  over  into 
literature,  and  on  the  pages  not  alone  of  men  like 
Carlyle,  and  of  women  like  George  Eliot,  but  in 
this  great  "  Faust,"  which  is  confessedly  above 
all  modern  works,  it  is  wrought  out  with  a  cogency 
and  insight  and  heart-searching  power  which  not 
even  the  sermons  of  Jonathan  Edwards  can  sur- 
pass. The  age  will  not  lack  teachers  of  what  is 
called  the  doctrine  of  sin  while  these  great  names 
command  the  attention  and  the  assent  which  they 
do  to-day. 

17. 
I  did  not  know  until  after  writing  this  passage 
that  I  have  on  my  side  the  authority  of  so  dis- 
tinguished and  fair-minded  an  ecclesiastic  as  the 
Dutch  commentator  Van  Osterzee,  who  in  his 
paper  on  "  The  Relation  of  Goethe  to  Christian- 
ity" alludes  to  the  very  passage  which  I  have 
cited,  and  the  close  of  "  Faust  "  as  an  interesting 
and  convincing  proof  that  Goethe  intended  more 
than  a  mere  artistic  use  of  what  may  be  called 
Christian  machinery.  I  think,  indeed,  that  for 
artistic  reasons  he  uses  the  Roman  Catholic 
mould  in  which  to  cast  his  conceptions ;  but  it  is 


82 


NOTES. 


evident  that  the  recognition  of  Christianity  in  the 
close  of  this  great  poem  is  most  striking  evidence 
of  the  place  which  religion  had  in  the  poet's 
thought. 

18. 

Vischer,  in  the  introduction  to  his  work  on 
"  Faust,"  compares  it  to  a  great  fan-shaped  city 
with  many  breaks  in  the  streets,  and  with  a  tow- 
ering central  thought  which  can  be  seen  from  all 
points.  Those  who  have  visited  Carlsruhe  in 
Germany  will  see  and  admire  the  force  of 
Vischer's  comparison. 


i 


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19. 
When,  after  the  battle  of  Jena  and  Napoleon's 
decisive  victory  over  Prussia,  Goethe,  who  had 
not  the  reputation  of  being  excessively  patriotic, 
was  presented  to  him,  Napoleon  was  so  struck 
with  his  aspect  and  his  words  that  he  ejaculated 
"  Vous  Ues  un  hymrm  !  " 


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